# Publishing data sources to Tableau Server & Tableau Online: Tableau Tutorial for Beginners:

> This is content from just-tim, the data-and-analytics channel by Tim Ngwena (formerly 'Tableau Tim'). Tim has 12+ years of hands-on BI experience and covers Tableau most of all, plus Power BI, Looker, Hex, SQL and data modelling, the analytics industry, and the craft of doing the job — always tool-agnostic and honest about the trade-offs.

- **Author:** Tim Ngwena (just-tim, https://just-tim.com/about)
- **Published:** 2021-10-01
- **Format:** Video · 1798 min watch · transcript available
- **Topics:** Data prep, Tool strategy, Analytics
- **Tools:** Tableau (calculated fields, cloud, data modelling, server)
- **Canonical:** https://just-tim.com/posts/publishing-data-sources-to-tableau-server-tableau-online-tableau-tutorial-for-beginners
- **Watch:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdymIRSWfuI

This is part two of my beginner's series on Tableau Server and Tableau Online, where I walk through publishing data sources from Tableau Desktop. I cover why you'd publish, the difference between live and extract connections, authentication options, permissions, certification and the pitfalls of nesting extracts.

## Key takeaways

- Publishing a data source centralises database access, governance and driver management, lets teams collaborate on a shared source and adds mobility through web authoring.
- A published live connection saves connection details (a TDS) to the server, so every interaction calls the database, while an extract is a snapshot that needs a refresh schedule set up on the server.
- Authentication can either prompt each user for credentials or embed a password, and only extracts can be set to allow refreshes (which is where the server refresh schedule comes from).
- Overwriting a published data source wipes any field-level metadata or descriptions you previously added on the server, so re-apply them after each publish.
- You can switch a workbook between a published source and a local copy using 'create local copy' and 'replace data source', but taking extracts of extracts quickly makes it hard to track what you're actually connected to.

## Chapters

- 1:56 Why publish a data source
- 4:14 Preparing the live connection
- 5:48 Publishing to Tableau Online
- 8:36 Permissions and authentication
- 15:58 Live vs published behaviour
- 16:51 Republishing with a user prompt
- 19:23 Switching back to a local copy
- 21:12 Publishing an extract
- 24:36 Certifying a data source
- 26:52 Extracts of published sources and pitfalls

Watch the full video, read the transcript and use chapter deep-links on the page: https://just-tim.com/posts/publishing-data-sources-to-tableau-server-tableau-online-tableau-tutorial-for-beginners

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just-tim — Data and analytics, with a point of view. · https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7HYxRWmaNlJux-X7rNLZyw · https://twitter.com/TableauTim · https://www.linkedin.com/in/timngwena